Top 10 INCREDIBLE STORIES of People Who SURVIVED the TITANIC 10. Frank Prentice – Crew (Assistant Storekeeper) Right before the Titanic made its final plunge
into the ocean, the ship’s stern rose perpendicular to the water briefly, before sinking back
down. It was there that crewman Frank Prentice,
one of the last people to make it off the Titanic alive, decided to jump off with two
of his comrades. One of his associates suffered a painful fall
by hitting the propeller on the way down, but Prentice made it clear 100 feet down,
where he stuck with his dying friend in the water before eventually being picked up by
a lifeboat. Prentice’s story is easy to verify, because
his watch stopped at 2:20 a.m. – the exact minute that the Titanic sank. Remarkably, Prentice survived a second shipwreck
when serving aboard the Oceanic in the First World War. 9. The Eight 3rd Class Chinese Passengers One thing you’ll be surprised by, if you
read the actual history of the Titanic evacuation, is that it was a highly civilized process. A lot of people followed the orders of the
officers and were happy to give up their seats on the lifeboats for women, children, and
the less fortunate without being prompted. If you want to hypoethetically explore your
chances of survival on an early 20th century shipwreck if you threw chivalry out the window,
look no further than the eight Chinese passengers who all sailed under a single ticket. The band of Cantonese sailors were put out
of work due to the coal strike and were on their way back to Hong Kong. Their names varied, depending on various immigration
records. When the iceberg struck, seven of them simply
snuck into the lifeboats before they were prepped for unloading and hid under the blankets. Five made it out alive. The eighth sailor was picked up out of the
sea by the life boat 14 (the one that picked up Harold Phillimore – we’ll get to him
shortly). Combined with the survival of the Titanic’s
sole Japanese passenger, the chances of an Asian surviving the Titanic was a pretty solid
7 for 9. 8. Olaus Jorgensen Abelseth – 2nd Class Passenger Olaus Jorgensen Abelseth was a Norweigan-born
livestock farm herder in South Dakota who was returning from a trip to visit relatives
when he boarded the Titanic with five family members. One of the ways that an adult male could have
found a place on the lifeboats when the Titanic sank was to have ample sailing experience,
since the crew could only be stretched so far on the 20 lifeboats they needed to deploy. Abelseth had six years of experience as a
fisherman and considered answering the call for sailors, but his brother-in-law and cousin
said they couldn’t swim so he decided to stay with them to ensure everyone’s survival
in his family. When the ship went under, Abelseth got caught
up in a line and lost hold of his family members. He swam twenty minutes in the water before
finding his way to a lifeboat, and worked to revive boat occupants who had also been
in the icy water while on the boat. 7. Hugh Woolner and Mauritz Björnström-Steffansson
– 1st Class Passsengers Hugh Woolner and Mauritz Björnström-Steffansson
were sitting in the smoking room when they heard the fatal iceberg collision. After escorting one of their female friends
to the lifeboats and helping with the unloading process, they waited on the lower deck as
the boats were going down and decided to make a jump onto the last lifeboat as it was being
lowered. This was within 15 minutes of the Titanic’s
eventual demise, so it was pretty much a “now or never” attitude. Bjornstrom-Steffanson made it on board but
Woolner hit the side of the boat and bounced off. His fingers briefly caught the side but slipped,
when Steffansson grabbed him as he was dangling over the ocean. He was eventually helped onto the boat. It must have been a dramatic site. 6. Charles Joughin – Crew (Chief Baker) Most people in the 28 degree water died of
hypothermia within 15 to 30 minutes, but Charles Joughin is a testament that every
rule of nature has exceptions. Joughin took to drinking when the Titanic
hit the iceberg (although to his credit, he also was quite helpful in throwing deck chairs
into the sea so people would have floatation devices) and when the ship went under, Joughin
casually swam around for over two hours until making his way to one of the life boats at
the crack of dawn. Survival experts link Joughin’s success
to the way that the alcohol raised his body temperature, and the fact that he claimed
to never have his head fully submerged in the water. Some critics doubt just how long Joughin was
in the water but the fact remains that eye witnesses on the lifeboat saw him swimming
after the ships were adrift. 5. Richard Norris Williams – 1st Class Passenger Richard Norris Williams was traveling first
class to a tennis tournament in the States with his father. After the iceberg hit, the two remained relatively
low-key, asking for the bar to be opened up and passing time in the exercise room (they
did also stop to rescue a trapped passenger), but that didn’t make the actual sinking
any less dramatic. Richard watched his dad crushed by a funnel,
before being carried away by the resulting wave to what was known by the ship’s schematics
as Collapsible A. It was one of two boats that didn’t have time to be properly loaded. In this case, the boat capsized before turning
right side up and was filled with water. Norris’s legs were so debilitated from the
water that the doctor aboard the Carpathia recommended amputation. He decided against it, and eventually worked
his legs back to functionality. He ended up continuing a tennis career that
saw him winning the 1924 Olympic gold medal. He also served with distinction in World War
I. 4. Rhoda “Rosa” Abbott – 3rd Class Passenger Everyone knows the “women and children”
first rule, but what many don’t know is that it was even crueler than you think. If you were 13 or older you were no longer
considered a child, and that didn’t sit well with 3rd class passenger and mother Rhoda
Abbott, who was not planning on abandoning her two sons, aged 13 and 16. A soldier with the Salvation Army and strong-willed
single mother, Rhoda grabbed each one by the hand and jumped over the rail as the ship
was going down. When she emerged, neither of her sons had
surfaced with her. They were both taken by the undertow. Like Norris Williams, Abbott surfaced to Collapsible
A, which meant that her legs were also in decrepit condition. She spent two weeks hospitalized but holds
the distinction of being the only woman to fall into the Atlantic from the Titanic and
survive. 3. Harold Charles Phillimore – Crew (Seward) James Cameron’s creation of Rose Decatur
(played by Kate Winslet) is fictional , but her inspiration might have come from Seward
Harold Phillimore, who was discovered clinging to a piece of floating debris among a sea
of dead bodies by the last lifeboat to go back for survivors. Phillimore shared the piece of driftwood with
another man (unlike Rose, who selfishly let the love of her life go), but over the course
of the 45 minutes between the Titanic’s sinking and his eventual rescue the other
man (whose name is lost to history) suddenly drifted off into the ocean. Phillimore ended up having a distinguished
career on the sea, earning the Mercantile Marine War and General Service medals. 2. Harold Bride – Marconi Wireless Company Harold Bride was one of two telegraph operators
for the Marconi Wireless Company, whose job was mainly to pass along messages between
the ship’s passengers and the mainland. But he was also obligated to pass along navigational
messages and warnings from other ships. This would make Bride and colleague James
Phillips the MVPs for working the telegraph like there was no tomorrow. They were even given permission to abandon
their posts, but stayed on until the ship’s very last minutes. It was only as the water was filling up their
room that they started to notice it was time to go. Both men made it onto the ship’s last lifeboat,
known by the ship’s schematics as Collapsible B, which was turned upside down in the water. Bride’s feet were so crushed frozen he could
barely make it up the rescue ladder when the Carpathia came. As he passed a dead body getting up the ladder,
he later realized that it was his comrade Phillips, who had passed during the night. Bride didn’t like talking about the Titanic
because he was “deeply disturbed by the whole experience, particularly by the loss
of his colleague and friend Jack Phillips.” 1. Charles Lightoller – 2nd Officer Charles Lightoller started a life on the sea
with an apprenticeship at the age of 13 and had already been to hell and back by the time
he sailed with the Titanic as its second officer. By the time he signed on to the White Star
line, he had already survived a shipwreck in Australia, a cyclone on the Indian ocean,
and had to hitchhike all the way from Western Canada to England when he was unsuccessful
in prospecting for gold in the Yukon and completely broke. When the ship hit the iceberg, Lightoller
was one of the first to start lowering lifeboats. At around 2:00 a.m. (20 minutes before the
sinking), he was ordered by his superior officer to get into the lifeboat, to which he replied,
“not damn likely.” He eventually swam to the overturned Collapsible
B and maintained order and morale among survivors who had all been thrown into the Atlantic,
and prevented it from capsizing by having the men rock from side to side. Lightoller was the very last person to be
rescued form the Titanic nearly four hours after the Carpathia picked up its first survivor. As the most senior officer to survive, he
was also the star witness at the congressional hearing.
